blind3rdeye @ blind3rdeye @lemm.ee

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617

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2 yr. ago

Vote for the best option you have. Maybe you don't feel like the current options are great; but just suppose you keep voting for the best of your options, and that best option keeps winning. The idea is that later someone will think "maybe I can win by being even better...". That's the theory of democracy anyway. If the best candidate keeps winning, then the competition improves to challenge them. But right now that doesn't seem to be happening.

As long as someone like Trump can get even vaguely close to victory, that either means that a near-majority of Americans believe Trump is the better option, or that not enough people are voting. I think it's probably the second one. The republican strategy has nothing to do with fielding the best candidate. Instead they rely on feeding voter apathy, anger, and doubt. They want anyone who isn't a zealot to be uncertain about voting. That's how they win. We're not going to see the best candidates while that strategy is in play. And to beat the 'don't vote' strategy... well, you just have to vote.

In some countries, zero is neither positive nor negative. But in others, it is both positive and negative. So saying the set of natural number is the same as non-negative [integers] doesn't really help. (Also, obviously not everyone would even agree that with that definition regardless of whether zero is negative.)

Look, I don't know exactly. I don't think it's an easy problem.

But I think the first stages would try to help the aliens understand how we communicate with each other. If people are waving their limbs around and breathing and poking at devices, and making all sorts of noises, it may be unclear which of those actions is meant to be communication. So the first thing is to have very clear correlations and patterns that are easy to recognise. Bring in the white-board to write words is a decent idea; but writing the word 'human' and then just standing there doing nothing with no follow-up is pretty much useless. There needs to be a couple of different words shown with very concrete context. 'Human' is not terrible, but it isn't a great choice because you can't really draw attention to what a human is when there is literally always a human there while you are trying to communicate. So it might be a decent word if the aliens already have the concept of words - but as a starting point... not really. Better to just say nouns for concrete things and point while doing it; with repetition and clear patterns. Writing just a list of counting numbers wouldn't be a bad idea either. If you write all the numbers up to 100 or so I think there would be a clear pattern, so that at least the aliens would know that you are trying to communicate by writing stuff.

Regarding my criticism of the movie, it's not so much that the whiteboard idea is bad, or that their attempts were bad; but rather that these are supposedly the attempts of experts - after other experts have tried and failed; and then the meetings with the project coordinators have weird discussions like "this method will take too long." - as if they think you can somehow side-step the need to establish a common language. And the description of the plan from the scientist talk about teaching the different meanings of the word 'you', and some grammar rules - as if that's somehow a core priority. I just think it's a really shallow level of discussion. Their strategy is super basic (but not unreasonable), and the criticism of it from the other characters is somehow even more shallow. They were even questioning why the scientist wanted to bring in the whiteboard. Like, isn't that extremely obviously? Do you really need to have a discussion about that? I really just felt like it was not a convincing set of smart people talking about the problem.

When I said anyone off the street could do a better job, I guess what I had it mind is that people would typically just point to things and say what they pointing to. They could bring in props and talk about the props; and perhaps try to give something to the aliens to interact with - if possible. Just basic ideas like that would be a decent start. I reckon that would be better than just holding up a whiteboard with a single word on it then just standing around. Like, how are the aliens meant to even know that it is a word at all - let alone what it might mean?

I stopped watching this movie after this scene (which is pretty close to the start). The way the scientists and world leaders were discussing how to communicate was just so absurdly shallow that I couldn't take the movie seriously.

Like, I can easily suspend disbelieve to watch a movie about aliens doing all sorts of weird things that are inconsistent with basic physics; but it just really bugs me when a movie makes a point of bringing together the smartest and most capable people to solve some issue, and then utterly fails to show even a faint glimmer of that knowledge or intelligence in what they do. I reckon a random person picked up off the street would do a better job of first-contact with aliens compared to these clowns.

Perhaps you just have a different view on what is or is not an ad. For example when I see a link in the start menu for an app that I did not install, I consider that to be an ad. The most common time this happens is for Office. (Or Microsoft 365 or whatever it is called now.) Also, when I see a 'suggestion' to sign into a Microsoft account to use OneDrive - I consider that an ad. Microsoft aren't telling me about OneDrive to improve my life. They are telling me to improve their profits. And when I type something in the start menu to launch an app, any result that comes up that is not something I put on my computer is an ad. It often will suggest particular websites for example.

These are the kinds of thing that we're talking about. I'm sure if you're using Windows on a home computer you will have seen these things. (I assume you're talking about ads in Windows. It would be quite something else if you'd never seen any ad anywhere.)

I found this story to be informative, about why Germany closed their nuclear power plants. I think that context can defuse a lot of arguments about Germany's decision.

It takes no time or effort whatsoever to form an opinion about post like this. So people can vote on it immediately. Whereas actual news is more often complex - and might take some time to read and process before the reader understands what it is about. They aren't going to upvote it if they don't know what it is about. And even then, there is a tendency to only vote things that trigger some kind of emotional response. Post that neutrally inform the reader generally don't make people think "yes! Lets get more people to see this."

tl;dr clickbait works.

Yeah, I've seen that a bunch of times. Some subredits seem to be a particularly popular places to karma-farm to make convincing sock-puppet accounts to sell. Often someone in the thread points out that it is a bot repost - but the fake post and fake comments are easier to engage with compared to the accusation that someone is a karma-farming bot.

(And of course, these bots-in-training will upvote each other's comments and posts... so it always looks pretty popular.)

Cool picture. But Chrome? Why?

There's a cool computer game that makes this point as part of the story line... I'd recommend it, but I can't recommend it in this context without it being a spoiler!

Recently I've found that I often get sad listening to wildlife. I've got a sense that a lot of what I've seen and heard is very soon to be gone. Not like in 1000 years in some hard to imagine future, but rather maybe within my own lifetime. I'm mourning for a dying world.

I sometimes think about this story about a recording of a now extinct bird; and I remember that there are stacks of other examples of species that have recently gone extinct. Too many for people to even talk about each of them. Just a few nice-sounding high-profile cases capture people's attention every so often.

I do put in a bit of effort in my own lifestyle to not make things worse. But it seems to me that there will be vast damage to the world already before humanity course corrects appropriately. It's very depressing.

Obviously the semi-censored version isn't the same - otherwise you wouldn't be talking about it. And the author has told you that it was a stylistic choice to use that different version. That's enough, isn't it? And judging by the reactions here, apparently the semi-censored version is even more hard-hitting than the full word!

Swearing is used for emphasis and to invoke a reaction. The attention it has brought here seems to show that it has invoked a reaction and captured people's attention. Maybe that drawing of attention means it was fit for purpose - or maybe not. In any case, it was the choice of the author to do it like that.

That's a fair point. So then one might expect the ghost to continue their motion tangential to the orbit of the earth, and so they'll float away.

However, the theory of general relativity suggests that gravity isn't really like other forces. It doesn't push or pull anything at all; but rather its bends the fabric of time and space. Objects 'falling' due to gravity, or 'in orbit' around a planet are actually moving in a direct straight line in curved space-time. And this is why gravity still applies to massless objects such as light. So then, I'd say the ghost would still be affected by gravity - and that their main concern would be falling into the earth rather than drifting away.

I don't believe these are genuine interview answers.

If we are separated from our parents shortly after birth, and grow up in isolation from other humans - then we would not learn to talk anyway. Note that that's what happens with most pets that humans keep. Maybe we get to walk past some other humans in the park a couple of times a week, but that's it.

The examples given are not problems with science and time-scales. They are examples of the corrupting influence of money. Companies push their product as being fantastic, and deliberately cripple any science that would challenge their profits. Cigarettes are probably the most famous example of this.

Help uncle jack...

Well, I've seen clear examples of AIs responding to comments on hot-button topics on reddit. But I guess that isn't a small website. In any case, the only point I was really trying to make is that widespread social manipulation is becoming easier. If someone decides they want to influence a discussion somewhere, they can do that without a great deal of effort. The comments don't have to be detailed or coherent. Simply being on-topic and persistent is enough, raising vaguely relevant talking-points whenever a response is expected.

In the brave new world of LLMs, it no longer takes hours to write comments and replies all day in favour of some political or commercial view. The whole process can be automated! Cool, right?

The 1% - but unfortunately this includes our leaders and lawmakers; so that puts power in the hands of those who value money above all else. And that power is used to extract more money and power from everyone else. Advertising always reinforces their message of course.